Not many people expected to wake up on the morning of June 4, 2013 and see the Boston Red Sox sitting atop the American League East.

The Red Sox have the second best record in the American League. They've got a two-and-a-half game lead over the second-place Yankees and Orioles.

If you told a lot of baseball pundits that this is where the Red Sox would be sitting in early June, many of them would probably assume that the Red Sox had basically drawn an inside-straight. They'd tell you that the team had caught all the breaks, or gotten lucky.

The amazing thing about where the Red Sox are right now, is that the team really hasn't been that lucky this season. No, the Red Sox haven't endured nearly as many injuries and obstacles as the New York Yankees have.

Things still have not gone as planned.

Shane Victorino has played in only 34 of the Red Sox's 58 games. He's made one trip to the disabled list, but he's missed numerous games nursing a series of nagging minor injuries.

Will Middlebrooks is currently on the disabled list recovering from back spasms. While it might have been very reasonable to expect one trip to the DL over the course of a season, not many would have predicted just how poorly the healthy version of Will Middlebrooks has performed.

When Middlebrooks returns from the DL, he will be sporting numbers far worse than anyone would have expected. He's hitting .201 with 8 home runs and 21 RBI. If you remove his career-day against the Blue Jays back in early April, those numbers drop down to five home runs and 17 RBI. Middlebrooks has also struck out 54 times in 174 at-bats ,his on-base percentage is just .234.

This past offseason, the Red Sox made a concerted effort to add depth to their bullpen. They traded for Pirates closer Joel Hanrahan and signed free agent Koji Uehara. Those moves, coupled with the return of Craig Breslow, Franklin Morales, Andrew Miller, Andrew Bailey and Junichi Tazawa, were designed to create a pen that could withstand some injuries and inconsistency.

The Red Sox probably weren't counting on the amount of injuries they've had to deal with.

Breslow and Morales missed the first month-and-a-half of the season. Hanrahan started off well, labored through some rough appearances and was then lost to injury for the remainder of the season.

Bailey has spent time on the disabled list as well. The Red Sox bullpen sports a 3.90 ERA, which is good for ninth in the AL. The 2012 bullpen finished with an ERA of 3.88. The bullpen is just another part of the Red Sox that hasn't been as good as the team had expected.

Remember when the Red Sox had really high hopes for free agent signee Jonny Gomes? If he wasn't starting, he was still going to be a key part of the 2013 Red Sox. The Red Sox are 35-23, surely things must be going as planned?

Nope, not even close.

Gomes has appeared in 44 games. He's only started 28 of them. He's hitting .175 with three home runs and 11 RBI.

The Red Sox made a two-year, $10 million commitment to Gomes, and as of now it doesn't look like they'll be making much of a return on that investment. Gomes' stock has dropped so low that, last weekend, when the Red Sox played a three-game series against the Yankees without both Jacoby Ellsbury and Shane Victorino, Gomes was only given one start.

Then there's the performance of Mr. Ellsbury. The 2011 A.L. MVP runner-up, Ellsbury has battled injuries throughout his career. Last season was no exception.

Up until last Thursday, this season had been the exception. The issue with the 2013 version of Jacoby Ellsbury hasn't been injuries, it has been production. When Ellsbury took the field on Sunday May 26, he was hitting .245 with an on-base-percentage of .317.

Ellsbury caught fire in the week leading up to his injury, but even with that brief glimpse of his 2011 version, he's still got one home run and 20 RBI. His 21 stolen bases leads all of baseball, but the rest of his numbers have been very disappointing.

Add up all of these issues, and it might make sense if you looked at the standings and saw a Red Sox team with a sub-.500 record struggling to keep pace in a competitive American League East.

That's not the case. The Red Sox are on top of the division. They've taken their lumps, and they've responded. Mike Carp and Daniel Nava have picked up the slack in the outfield. Mike Napoli is among the AL leaders in RBI. David Ortiz and Dustin Pedroia have been as good, if not better, than expected. Jose Iglesias and Stephen Drew have both performed well at shortstop.

Clay Buchholz, Jon Lester and John Lackey have all been either as good, or better than expected. The performance of the starting rotation has made the bullpen a little less critical to the team's success.

If this team can just catch a few breaks, this summer they could be really good.